Flip-flopping Pantsuit Plummets in Poll

Mrs. Clinton now sees us remaining in Iraq if she becomes President, God help us all.

WASHINGTON, March 14 -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a "remaining military as well as political mission" in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence -- even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of "bringing the troops home."

She said in the interview that there were "remaining vital national security interests in Iraq" that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.

Something tells me she got a whiff of this new poll, which shows the clean, fresh candidate Barack Obama now right on her heels.

Soaring Democratic 2008 contender Barack Obama has erased Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-sizable lead and dramatically closed the gap to single digits, a stunning new Time magazine poll shows.

Obama's dramatic surge in the last few weeks puts him a scant 7 points behind front-runner Clinton, 30 percent to 23 percent. That's a statistical tie, since it's within the survey's 4-point margin of error.

Clinton has been steadily hemorrhaging voter support to Obama since she entered the race, dropping from a 19-point lead in January to a 12-point edge in February - to the 7-point spread today.

The Time poll reveals southerners scrambling away from Clinton. She now leads Obama in the region by just 4 points - down from a whopping 23-point edge in the South last month.

Dan at Riehl World View says Okay, So Hillary Is Just Plain Stupid. He makes a good point.